


A Little Unwell

by imagined_melody



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Confessions, Future Fic, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-01
Updated: 2017-09-01
Packaged: 2018-12-22 08:15:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11963364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imagined_melody/pseuds/imagined_melody
Summary: Next to him, Andrew made a small discontented sound. Neil smiled and hummed back to him, quietly letting the other man know he was awake. Andrew shifted on the bed, his arm coming out to grasp ineffectually at the bedside table, and he groaned again. “Kevin.”Neil froze.During a moment of vulnerability, Neil learns something new about Andrew and his medication.





	A Little Unwell

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Unwell" by Matchbox Twenty, which is a damn good Andrew Minyard song, if you ask me.

Neil woke up, as he nearly always did, surrounded by warmth. Andrew’s body radiated heat from the other side of the bed; there was some distance between them, which was typical since neither man particularly liked being jostled in his sleep, but closer against Neil’s body were the softly purring forms of the two cats. It had been a warm early-spring night, and the air from the open window promised a temperate day. Neil stretched gently, not ready to open his eyes yet. It was just slightly too warm for the quilt on the bed; soon spring would bring its usual humidity, and they’d be kicking off the tangled sheets as they slept.

Next to him, Andrew made a small discontented sound. Neil smiled and hummed back to him, quietly letting the other man know he was awake. Andrew shifted on the bed, his arm coming out to grasp ineffectually at the bedside table, and he groaned again. “ _Kevin_.”

Neil froze. His eyes blinked open slowly, and he took in Andrew’s tensely held posture, the way his eyes were squeezed shut. He looked clammy and his jaw was clenched like he might vomit. Neil propped himself up on his elbow to see him better. “What did you say?” he asked, feeling the drowsiness seeping out of his body with an alarming quickness.

“Kevin, give me the pills,” Andrew mumbled through his gritted teeth. “Where are they?” He reached for the table a second time, but seized with what Neil was now sure was repressed nausea, and stilled again. 

“I—“ Neil started to reply, but quickly realized he was at a loss for what to say. He had no idea what was happening. “Andrew, it’s Neil. Kevin’s not here. What’s going on?”

Very gingerly, Andrew’s left hand came up from where it was resting on the mattress and beckoned to Neil. Neil frowned at him—he was being told to come closer, but he couldn’t imagine Andrew wanted to be touched right now, not in this state. Hesitantly he clambered over to the foot of the bed and climbed out, avoiding Andrew’s prone form and coming to crouch down in front of him. Andrew’s fingers reached out, though they didn’t touch Neil, and he squinted his eyes in hazy scrutiny. “Neil,” he finally said, although his speech was slurred, indistinct. “I think I’m sick.”

“No shit,” Neil replied; now that he was in front of Andrew, his illness was obvious. “I think you’ve got a fever. Can I touch your forehead?” Andrew flicked his fingers in a vaguely affirmative gesture, and Neil lightly touched his palm to the skin, finding it hot. He didn’t keep it there for long—Andrew had consented to the contact, but he didn’t look entirely at ease with it, and Neil didn’t want to worsen his discomfort. Logically he knew Andrew should be moved, perhaps put in the shower to help break his sweats and fever, or at least relocated to the toilet in case he lost control of his stomach. But Andrew did not look like he would take well to that idea. In fact, he looked like he was halfway back to sleep already.

“Hey.” Neil tapped his fingers on the mattress a few inches from Andrew’s body to get his attention. Andrew cracked his eyes open again, expression grumpy. “I’m gonna get you a cool cloth for your forehead and some ibuprofen, okay? If you take them I’ll let you get some more sleep.” 

Andrew groaned out a sulky, “I hate you” and burrowed further into the covers—but it wasn’t a no, and Neil knew that his lack of outright refusal was as good a yes as he would get. 

Neil had thought Andrew would protest at being taken care of, but the argument was largely a moot point; after his initial stubbornness, Andrew slept the rest of the morning. It was only later, when Andrew’s fever had broken and he was well enough to sit on the couch watching bad sci-fi TV movies, that Neil recalled what had bothered him that morning. “Why did you call me Kevin earlier?”

Andrew narrowed his eyes in Neil’s general direction, but his gaze contained neither aggravation nor curiosity. “Hmm?” he asked noncommittally.

“When you woke up this morning,” Neil clarified, “you reached for something on the table. And then you called me Kevin.” Andrew didn’t respond, clearly being mildly obstinate since Neil hadn’t actually re-asked his question. Neil leaned his elbow on the back of the couch, angling nearer to Andrew without touching him. “Why did you ask him for pills?”

Andrew turned his stare on him. His gaze was as unwavering as always, if slightly unfocused from his illness. “Does it matter?”

“Not if you say it doesn’t,” Neil responded readily. “But I’d like to know.”

There was a long wait as Andrew’s silence stretched on between them. Neil let it settle; if Andrew was open to sharing, he would do so on his own time, and if not, Neil would not press him any further, but either way the next move was Andrew’s alone. 

“What do _you_ think?” Andrew finally asked.

Neil shifted, frowning as he contemplated the question. “My first year as a Fox, you always used to have Kevin hold onto your meds, when you wanted to be sober,” he supplied. 

“One point for Neil Josten,” Andrew said.

“So you were confused,” Neil added slowly. “You didn’t know where you were at first, when you woke up. But I know you’re not that confused every morning. Why did you think you were back at college today?”

“Oh, Neil,” Andrew sighed. “Used to be routine. I wake up, I feel like shit, the first thing I do is take my meds. If I don’t have them, Day does.”

Neil gaped at him. “Wait. Are you saying you used to feel like this _every morning_? Until you got sober? All those years you were medicated, you felt like that?” He’d seen Andrew at various points of withdrawal, of course—seen how long it took before he crashed, and what happened when even that wore off and his body rioted at being deprived of its addiction. Andrew must have ridden out the first stage of withdrawal while he slept each night, but when he woke up, Stage Two was there to greet him. Even if he swallowed his pills instantly upon waking, he would have been miserable until they kicked in and the high of mania drowned out everything else.

“Kill the pity party, Neil,” Andrew said, snapping his fingers in front of Neil’s face to redirect his attention. “Don’t cry for me Argentina, and all that.”

Neil rolled his eyes. At this point, it shouldn’t surprise him when Andrew was dismissive of his own pain. “At least answer me this,” he ventured. “How long did it take for the pills to kick in?”

Instead of responding verbally, Andrew counted off on his fingers, extending them in front of him so they were at Neil’s eye level. Neil watched as he raised them, one by one, until all ten were up. “Ten minutes?” Neil asked. He knew from experience that it took a bit longer than that for the effects of the medication to fully set in—but ten minutes probably was enough to take the edge off. After that, Andrew would be steady enough to get up, and by the time he’d gotten ready he’d have been flying high like always. But those ten minutes lying there, waiting for his physical weakness to be slowly eaten away by the false front of medicated energy, made something in Neil bristle. On his meds, Andrew wasn’t really himself—more a pharmaceutically-controlled version of himself. To spend ten minutes a day feeling the gap between his inner self and this medicated façade growing wider and wider…

To Neil, that short stretch of time would feel like torture. At least, for all the years he had been something other than his true identity, it had been his choice. He fleetingly remembered the Raven’s Nest, how they had forced him to be what he was not, and repressed a shudder.

He was a fool to think Andrew wouldn’t see it. “Josten,” Andrew growled, his tone both a protective gesture and a warning: _Whatever it is you’re thinking about, stop it._

Neil knew there was nothing he could say, nothing Andrew _wanted_ him to say, to alleviate the shit Andrew had gone through. Andrew didn’t dwell any more than he had to, and he’d rather Neil didn’t either. But Neil felt compelled to give him something, in exchange for this unintentional dredging-up of unpleasant memories. He drummed his fingers contemplatively on the coffee table for a moment. “You remember that swine flu epidemic we had a few years back?” he eventually said. “Well, I got it somehow—I guess maybe from someone at school, a ton of people had it. I was sick for almost two weeks. At one point I had a high-grade fever, and I’m pretty sure I was hallucinating; I thought I saw some kind of bugs on the window, just swarming, and I went to crush them, but there was nothing there. My mom saw me at the window and pulled me away before someone saw us.” Neil cocked his head as something occurred to him. “I guess I was pretty bad, because she usually kept us moving no matter what. But she made me stay in bed for days.”

Andrew’s even stare was boring into him. “You don’t have to do this,” he said after a moment, but there was no edge to his tone, so Neil knew Andrew respected him for the admission. 

“I know,” Neil said. His hands took up a restless fidgeting, worrying at the raised mark of a scar on his hand. Andrew rolled his eyes and insinuated his hand between Neil’s own, letting his own fingers trace the same spot Neil had been pressing against. Somehow the action had a completely different connotation when Andrew did it, and Neil relaxed into it, letting Andrew use the grip on his hand to pull him closer to his body.

“Are you saying if I’m contagious and you get this, I should keep you away from windows?” Andrew murmured against his hair.

Neil grinned despite himself. “Shut up,” he replied, and curled closer into Andrew’s body heat. The lacing of their fingers together sent up an answering warmth in his own heart.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to join me and my Foxhole Court obsession [on tumblr!](http://imaginedmelody.tumblr.com)
> 
> (Sorry for the abrupt ending! I had nothing more to say, so I just...stopped.)


End file.
